O Ovaries I Hardly Knew Ye

In the news now, women who have had their ovaries removed, like me, have a higher risk of dying of a number of things, including cardiovascular disease.

You can read it in this story from ABC News.

As someone who had her ovaries removed in a complete hysterectomy at the tender age of 29, I certainly raised my eyebrows at this.

I have always been on some kind of hormone replacement therapy, although I don't take the full dose I'm prescribed. I take half a pill a day, not a whole one, because that has always been enough to cut the hot flashes.

Maybe that will save me.

But now I wonder if I've done myself harm doing that, although I guess something is better than nothing. The HRT I take is plant based, not animal based, and most definitely is not Premarin; that gave me horrid migraines. I take something called Estrace. I also drink soy and take a soy supplement.

Of course, HRT is also linked to heart disease. Heart disease anyway I look at it.

Most likely this wouldn't have me thinking too much, but since I'm still having chest pains, of course the "heart disease" part caught my eye.

I want to live to the ripe ol' age of 86. I don't want to die young. My life has been hard and difficult. I was really hoping at some point it would get a little easier.

I had endometriosis. Six years of trying to conceive through a nightmare of pain was the result. From 1988 to 1992 I had six surgeries, three through the belly button and three long cuts or smiley faces. I kept developing cysts the size of grapefruits on my ovaries and they would twist and grow infected.

It was like having appendicitis all the time.

I was on a lot of medicine and who knows what that did to me. And then the last surgery was the hysterectomy, although even then, when there was just a fraction of a percent of conception, I wasn't ready for that.

Surely the medical establishment did what it thought was right at the time, but who knows. I doubt the intentions now, althought I don't know what else could have been done. If I could have held out a little longer, maybe.

But I can't change that past, and now I can only go forward, armed with my HRT and my childless self. Now I just aim for a decently long and relatively comfortable old age.

Surely the Higher Power can help with that. . . .